


Daydreams and Ponderings

by LilithiaWen



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Highlander - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, One Shot, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-04-04 13:53:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4140213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilithiaWen/pseuds/LilithiaWen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One shots and prologues that will hopefully become full stories one day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. He's Magic and Myth

Summary: Centuries before the events of the Thor movie, Thor kills Loki in a drunken sparring accident. But the God of Fire is not so easily snuffed out. Reborn on Midgard, Loki rises greater than ever before. Like gold, purified through flames. ______________ 

It had been a spar. High on a recent victory and perhaps a bit drunk, he had refused to take no for an answer. He had dragged his brother out onto the sparring fields and he had been relentless. Thor had just laughed when told to stop, when begged to stop. He had been too battle hungry, and his brother too tired.

His brother had ducked and dodged, even laid down his weapon, but Thor had not stopped. Eventually, he had stepped wrong, just as Thor had thrust the sword in front of him with a laughing cry of triumph.

The blade had struck true and Loki was left staring in shock at the sword impaled in his chest.

Pain robbed Loki of his voice and he could not even utter a cry. He only gasped a rattling breath and reached up a hand to grip convulsingly at the sword's blade, the sharp edge cutting deeply into his palm.

The pain in a new place helped focus his shock. He looked at Thor, his disbelief wracking his body as much as the pain was. Thor was still, his face blank and in that same expression Loki had been seeing all his life. The one that meant he was completely clueless and his brother was going to have to explain.

Loki removed his hand from the sword and reached up with blood coated and shaking fingertips. He cradled Thor's face and he smiled a sad and bloody smile even as his legs gave out and he slipped off the blade, the sword cutting ever deeper as it went.

He fell on his back, the impact with the ground jarring and knocking the breath out of him.

As he lay on the ground, his life draining away, a dim part of his mind wondered how it all came to this. And yet…it was inevitable. In the waning moments before his death, he ponders his life and he realizes… this was always how it was going to end.

He laughs a bloody laugh and he feels the pain of it.

"I always knew…" he gasps out, each breath escaping him as a crimson mist. Blood is filling his mouth, and the taste of it is sharp. It trickles from the corners of his sanguine stained lips.

"I always knew that you would be the death of me…"

He laughs again, because he has nothing else.

"but not like this… not like this, Thor."

Through his dimming vision, he sees his brother standing above him, frozen with his bloody sword held aloft. His expression has finally changed. Thor is pale faced and horrified, his shock rendering him immobile.

"Why…why didn't you listen?" he murmurs.

"You never listen." He answers his own question, laughing once more.

He finally lets out a pained cry as the agony reaches a crescendo.

"Thor…" he gasps out.

With his last remaining strength, he reaches up a beseeching hand to his brother. Loki has no power left to heal himself and no healer will make it in time.

He was going to die. And he was afraid and it hurt, so much.

He wants Thor to hold his hand. It would be the greatest comfort, here at the end.

But his brother does not move. He stands as if he were a statue, stony and cold.

"Brother…" Loki pleads, his vision fading to blackness. "Thor…"

Loki tried to fight, to live just one second longer. If he could hold on for another moment, surely Thor would grasp his hand and send him on with words of love. For didn't everyone deserve such an end? One of love and comfort?

But as everything went dark, Loki had only his yearning, and his fear, and his pain. He had only the blood pooling beneath him and the promise of the end. He had the darkness, and the cold, and the silence of the ones he loved. There was no comfort and there was no love.

His arm falls to his side and his eyes close for a final time.

And when Thor falls to his knees, weeping and screaming, Loki's bloody and still form cradled in his arms…

It was already too late.

 


	2. Iron Heart, Lightning Born

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony Stark, the Iron Avenger, dies defending his world. Only it turns out that calling himself a phoenix was more accurate than he ever imagined. Reborn as an Immortal in the ancient world of another reality, He does what he does best. Survive. Memories or no memories. Now as Methos, the eldest of all, his memories have returned.

The thing with reincarnation was that souls weren't necessarily bound to a reality. So in one life, you could be just another average person, only to be reborn on the other side of the multiverse as a demigod, or a wizard, or a mutant, or any number of strange and interesting things.

Like a genius, billionaire superhero reborn as an Immortal.

________

 

It came to him slowly, over the course of a week, after the quickenings of the ones he had once called his brothers had settled. He's not sure why. Maybe because they were so old. Maybe it was because it was a double quickening. He can't be sure what triggered it all. All he knows is this: there are memories within him of another life. A life in another reality. An amazing life. His life. His previous life.

He lies back in his bed at an extremely exclusive resort in Indonesia and he laughs at the irony of it all. In one life he had once been called the Merchant of Death. And now he was Thanatos, Death himself.

Methos chuckled. It was all so very interesting!

Tony Stark.

What an interesting life he'd had. And what an interesting world! Immortals were the most interesting thing here. But there – aliens, mutants, monsters, magic, and superheroes.

It was fantastic.

Methos was suddenly gripped by a fierce desire to go flying. But his armor didn't exist here. Not right now anyway.

'At least I died well.' He thought with a sigh.

While the amount of time that he had been Tony Stark was practically insignificant in comparison to the thousands that he had been Methos, he was still greatly affected. Partially because of how unique Tony's life had been, but also because of when it had been. Tony was a modern man of the 20th and 21st centuries and even in this reality some things resonated with his life. Current world leaders, events, music, pop culture, etc. The technology was behind, but still familiar. Of course, the apparent absence of alien technology and super scientists like Howard Stark could account for that. Not to mention his own absence, he realized. There was no Tony Stark here. And it was still the 90s, too.

He steepled his hands together beneath his chin, as if in prayer, contemplating where to go from here.

It was obviously time for Dr. Adam Pierson to suffer an unfortunate demise. He'd already kept the identity longer than he had planned. But he adored Joe and MacLeod was just so interesting that he had stayed. It had been dangerous. He hadn't been very discrete in his friendship with the Highlander and he'd given the Watchers a lot of clues. If they didn't know he was an Immortal by now then he would be very surprised, and also disappointed in their skills. It wasn't a big leap from there to discover his real identity. He had been embarrassingly indiscrete with it all. But he could hardly help himself. Baiting Watchers had been the hobby of centuries. And he was tired of having to hide anyway.

He contemplated simply slipping into one of his other lives, but dismissed it. They were all simple and boring and he craved excitement again. He wanted to create and build and explore science.

Besides, there was the long term to think about.

Immortals just couldn't stay hidden forever. With the advances of technology and communication, it was just impossible. Some reporter was going to get lucky and net the story of a lifetime, or an Immortal was going to be very unlucky and heal in front of witnesses. All it took was one lucky camera and before you could even realize what was going on, there would be a video going viral.

They were going to be outed. It was inevitable. From there, it could go either way. Awe, condemnation, neutrality. All of the above.

If they wanted to ensure that they weren't hunted, certain things needed to happen. The Game had to go. Period. The irredeemable among them had to be culled. And they needed to endear themselves to the greater public.

He might as well do his part. He was the eldest after all. There was no way he wouldn't end up a public Immortal sooner or later. He had left far too many clues to his identity, scattered over the millennia. He could destroy the evidence of his existence he supposed, but it wouldn't do to be discovered and seen as deliberately deceptive.

He'd had a lifetime of being famous in a modern world. He knew how to handle it.

Now he just needed to set up a new life and get to work. He would definitely go into green energy again. It had upset him as Tony Stark, but as Methos, who had wandered this world for over five thousand years, well – pollution just really pissed him off.

He wondered absently if he would be able to resist taking the name of Tony Stark. The last time he had used a variation of that name had been when he had ruled Rome as the Emperor Antoninus.

First though, he needed to settle the affairs of Adam Pierson. After that…it would be time to once more change the world.


	3. The Lonely Gods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Civilization is all but destroyed by devastating meteors. The population is greatly reduced and the majority of the Immortals perish. Methos is trapped directly after the Apocalypse, and it is not until a few centuries later that he is discovered and freed by some miners. Methos must adjust to this new world and lead his new found people to greatness.

Following a devastating meteor shower of catastrophic proportion, civilization collapses. Millions die, including most of the Immortals. The meteors cause so much damage to the Earth's crust, that the earth's plates shift and landmasses now link all of the continents as is they'd always been that way.

With so much death and destruction, technical knowledge is lost and things like electricity and computers became unimaginable tales by the fireside. The surviving Watchers see the perfect solution to the world's problems, and convince the remaining Immortals to come forward and help mankind recover from the worldwide disaster. For many of the remaining Immortals had all come from Eras before electricity, where mankind had to make due with what they could grow and make from the raw materials around them.

__________

Methos had been in a train station when the world had began to fall apart around him. It had happened all so quickly.

He had been returning to civilization after a sabbatical in his beloved Himalayas and a lovely Tibetan monastery that he had frequented for centuries. He had been going South, into India, to get to a private plane he had stored there. He had been planning to travel some more, maybe visit Joe, maybe be a doctor again or a scientist. But then the world went to hell. Fire. Buildings and stone falling. And screaming.

He had become pinned beneath stone debris when the quickenings had hit. Hundreds of Immortals pouring into him. He had died from the onslaught of so many simultaneous quickenings, horrified at the thought that all of those quickenings had to come to him to find a living Immortal.

Since then he had been trapped in an endless cycle of waking and dying, trapped in darkness. Every waking moment an agony. It wasn't the first time it had happened to him, it wasn't even the worst time, but Methos greatly feared it would be the last. He wasn't entirely sure how much time had passed, only that it had been years. But he shored up his mind and endured. He had great experience with this sort of hell and he wouldn't let it be the end of him. He had lost his mind before, endured insanity. For a thousand years.

But never again.

So he had reached into himself, immersing into a deep meditation. He still felt the pain, recognized it, but as is from far away. Aware of the world around him, but detached from it. So he let his thoughts wander, his mind pondering endless subjects and memories. And time passed, and he was aware it did, but it became meaningless. Not that time had ever quite meant as much to someone as old as he.

Time…


	4. Stellar Remnants

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When stars have nothing else left, iron is born in their hearts. It is a beautiful, but bitter thing. A victory and a defeat. For it is the death knell of a star. Once they start creating iron, it is all they have. Eventually their Iron hearts collapse beneath the weight of their light, and the star goes supernova. But even death is not the end, for those Iron Hearts survive. Scattered across the cosmos, to live again in a new form.

He would like to say that he never saw it coming. But that wasn't quite true. He had been let down and betrayed too many times in his life. For him, love was pain. To give trust was to be betrayed. Even in victory, there was loss. And if you dare to fly, you will fall.

 

“And why do we fall, master Anthony?”

He had fallen so many times in his life. And he had always gotten back up.

“So we can learn to pick ourselves back up.”

He doesn't think he's getting up from this one.

 

* * *

 

 

        They say you see your life flash before your eyes as you die. He hadn't really believed that before. Too close to death too many times, and it had never happened.

He’ll have to rethink that belief though.

The last he recalled, he had been drowning in his own blood, left to die in a freezing bunker. Now there was no pain or discomfort, though he couldn't feel his body. And he was seeing his life as if it were a movie.

It was…enlightening. Seeing it all from the outside. So many things he had never realized. Things missed in the moments.

It was a good thing that it seemed as if his emotions were dampened and distant. Otherwise he would alternatively be a sobbing mess or more furious than a raging Hulk.

Fuck Steve Rogers. Fuck those cold soldiers. And that damn witch too.

To realize that he had been mind raped was horrifying. But oh what a relief to know that he hadn’t been entirely responsible for Ultron. To witness all the wrongs she and others had committed against him…

They were all just lucky that he appeared to be dead. If he ever saw them again…

He would just have to trust that Pepper, Rhodes, Happy, and his synthetic children would reap vengeance in his honor. He hoped they were alright.

He's not sure where he is, or how long he has been there. It is difficult to care. His feelings are dim and fleeting and his memories are faded. He hasn't forgotten anything. His life is all there in his mind. It just felt distant. Almost like it happened to someone else, or maybe it was a story he heard. He drifted, and nothing seemed to matter anymore.

He heard things, eventually. Distant voices. He couldn't understand the words, they were muffled as if he was underwater. But they sounded kind. Loving.

He wondered, when he was capable. But often his thoughts fluttered away. It was dark, warm, and peaceful and someone loved him.

So he slept and dreamed, safe for the first time he could remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little prologue snippet I wrote for a possible series called Stellar Remnants. The idea is that Tony dies in Siberia, but of course he doesn't stay that way. He ends up being reborn into an alternate reality. I actually have quite a few ideas and people that Tony could be reincarnated as. One of them could be the Methos is Tony story, except I intend for Tony to never forget his previous life in the others.


End file.
